Montessori Storytime: If you don't care, then they won't either

Finally, a successful volunteer storytime at my son's school since my first one. In my previous ones I had a touch too much planned and another time I had really low energy resulting from an awesome road trip. This time around I had just two books, one craft, a "get your wiggles out" body moment song and a partridge in a pear tree.

My program:

Opening Song: "We are here for storytime." *from Simply Super Storytimes (JR 372.4 CAS)

Book: Someone Bigger by  Jonathan Emmett. I introduced this book by first asking the kids if they had any favorite stories at home. I then shared that I picked this book because it was one of my favorites to read to Zane. I love that it has big colorful pictures and that a silly story takes place where little guy Sam is denied getting to hold onto a kite because he's not "big enough", yet with the whole town and even some zoo animals pulled into the air by the kite, it remains for Sam to be the one who rescues everyone. Sound effects, performing the actions of the characters, and inviting the kids to shout out the last word of the line "this kite needs someone BIGGER!" kept the older kids engaged. Did I mention my group is made up of 4-10 year olds?

Craft: That book transitioned us to our craft, which is my way to break up storytime a little bit, especially as the older kids often share how "bored" they are. Personally, I'm like, "listen, kid, you can sit for an hour watching Ninja Turtles, you can sit for 30 minutes listening to books," but whatever. Our craft was to make a kite scene. I had a long roll of paper lightly colored with blue crayon taped to the wall. We gave out kites and die cut figures (kids' choice of boy, princess, elephant, chicken, rabbit, and turtle. The chicken was not a favorite. :) ). The kids glued their kites up high and their figure down low and got crayons to decorate the kite and draw a string to their figure. After about 10-15 minutes and a few tears from one of the younger ones, we returned to the carpet.

Wiggles!: Now I'm no fool. I know that after a craft the kids are talking to each other and distracted and they don't want to settle down. So I had them do a body movement song from Simply Super Storytimes chapter on Flying High Stories. Titled "The Wind" and sung to "Here We Go Looby Loo." You jump up, you skooch down, you go forward, then back and then you go round and round. I walked them through it first, then sang slow and got faster and faster. And then evil girl that I am, I sang the last line ("here we go round and round") over and over and over super fast and ended with "and then we sit down!" That got the energy out of them and the focus back on me for our final book.

Book: I introduced our final book by talking to the kids about our craft. I asked, "what did we do?" When they answered they made "their own" craft, I asked, "can you take it home?" "Noooo." So then I pointed out that although they each made their own kite, together we made a field of kites, a pretty picture that took up the whole space of the wall that we did in a short amount of time and that by ourselves, the same picture would have taken forever. And here's a little story about coming together called Stone Soup. I picked this version by Muth because it stars an Asian cast and introduced the kids to new costumes, foods, and ways that people celebrate. I love a book that does so much. And lucky me, that actually sat fascinated by the book.

It was a great storytime!